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HK: Fachverband Hadronen und Kerne

HK 66: Plenary VIII

HK 66.3: Invited Talk

Thursday, March 19, 2009, 12:00–12:30, Audi-Max

Density Functionals in Nuclear Structure Physics — •Dario Vretenar — Physics Department, University of Zagreb, Croatia

Among the microscopic approaches to the nuclear many-body problem, energy density functionals (EDF) provide the most complete and accurate description of ground states and collective excitations over the whole nuclide chart. One of the principal objectives of modern nuclear structure theory is to develop a universal EDF framework, in the sense that the same functional is used for all nuclei, with a universal set of parameters determined from low-energy data or, eventually, from two-nucleon and three-nucleon interactions. The current generation of EDFs, with parameters adjusted to empirical properties of nuclear matter and bulk properties of finite nuclei, has achieved a high level of accuracy in the description of ground states and properties of excited states in arbitrarily heavy nuclei, exotic nuclei far from beta-stability, and in systems at the nucleon drip-lines.

In addition to recent advances, future challenges for nuclear EDFs will be discussed. Arguably the most important is a fully microscopic, low-energy QCD-based foundation of the EDF framework. When considering applications, equally important is to develop EDF-based structure models that go beyond the lowest order approximation - the static nuclear mean field. Excitation spectra and transition rates can only be calculated by including dynamical correlations through restoration of broken symmetries, and configuration mixing of symmetry-breaking mean-field states.